Coimbatore: Area sabhas to take off today

COIMBATORE: After the formation of 846 area sabhas in 100 wards, the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation will conduct area sabha meetings on Tuesday. Coimbatore in-charge minister V Senthil Balaji will take part in the meeting in ward 63, to be held in Palani Andavar Temple at Ramanathapuram.
As per the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies (Ward Committee and Area Sabha) Rules 2022, a ward can be divided up to 10 area sabha. The delimitation of the boundary of each area sabha was fixed by the planning department, based on the suggestions from the respective ward councillor.

The meetings will be held at least in three area sabhas in each ward on Tuesday, deputy commissioner M Sharmila said. “All the voters can take part in the meeting, where the details of ongoing projects and people to be benefitted will be shared. They can raise demands on facilities they require.”
A minimum participation of residents has been prescribed in the rules to form quorum. There should be at least 50 people if there are 500 voters in an area earmarked as area sabha. There should be 100 people if there are up to 3,000 voters, and 200 people if the number of voters is up to 10,000.
The sabhas will have to conduct meetings once in three months. “Councillors should nominate one voter from each area sabha as representative to the ward committee. A ward committee meeting will be held with the participation of the representatives, who will push for works to be taken up by the city corporation, based on the discussions carried out in the area shaba meetings,” Sharmila said.
The councillors were asked to submit the list of ward committee members latest by Monday, a corporation official said. “Some wards have 10 area sabha, whereas others have only four. The numbers were determined based on the suggestion from councillors to group streets under one sabha,” he added.
While ruling party councillors are not happy with the development as they think that it will erode their power, coalition party councillors fear that there will be pressure from the ruling party functionaries to include their party men into ward committees. “A large number of people worked for my victory.
If I choose only 10 of them, I will end up antagonizing the rest. I have not submitted the ward committee members list yet and am waiting for others to do it first,” said a DMK councillor. It would be difficult to reign in the members, if they resort to some illegal activity by misusing his name, a Congress councillor said.
AIADMK councillor R Prabakaran said the initiative will not make any difference. “It will backfire on the DMK government as the members suggested by the party councillors will harass the public for their personal benefit. It will pave way for large-scale corruption,” he said